Posts Tagged ‘prescription drug dangers’

A doctor squard will take on pharmaceutical ads. A new Federal Drug Administration program will urge doctors to blow the whistle on misleading drug advertisements.

The “bad ad program”

The “bad ad program” announced Tuesday, is “part of the agency’s latest effort to police the pharmaceutical industry’s multi-billion-dollar marketing machine,” The Associated Press reports.

The problem with this is program is The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) let the horse out of the barn quite awhile ago. The barn door is shut tight now, for any real opportunity to return to the way things should be.

Despite, this late and lame effort to curtail the pharmaceutical companies from reaching the TV audience with false and misleading adverisements, they still will have the lion’s share of sales through aggressive marketing.

Drug companies are legally required to present a balanced picture of a drug’s benefits  in promotions. That remains to be seen according to some critics.

Brands are aware of their marketing tactics, despite maintaining their compliance with the law. Drug companies make major investments in promotion drugs to doctors and layman alike.

Drug companies invested $12 billion on promoting drugs to doctors that is three times higher than ads aimed at consumers in 2008. That means they spent $4 billion on selling the consumer on the idea of using their drugs.

Drug Awareness

Drug awareness is really a war against time. The reason is that a pharmaceutical company has a certain amount of time to cash in on a drug. They have the intellectual rights for a certain period of time before it runs out. The other reason is drugs present dangers that will come out before they made their millions in profits.

The only guaranteed protection is consumer knowledge, which means that the citizens believe the only elements to good health is better living. The consumer is boss everywhere but in medicine. Positioning the consumer to emerge as the whistler blower is the best solution.

Doctors can report false advertising, but that will not help allopathic medicine climb up from the brink and make health care relevant.

What makes kidney disease a growing menace is fact that there is no cure according to allopathic medicine. Meanwhile, the population of people undergoing dialysis is also exploding, and is projected to pass the 2 million mark worldwide by 2010, according to some studies.  

Kidney Disease

The leading cause of Kidney disease is diabetes. It accounts of 44% of new cases in 2005. The numbers are only on their way up. Nephropathy, kidney failure is a frequent complication of diabetes.

Obesity plays a role by raising blood pressure, and increasing insulin resistance. Both can stress your Kidney’s.

Stress is another factor since it raises blood pressure.

High cholesterol produces a fatty substance that can clog up your kidneys.

Urinary track infections can cause kidney problems.

Drug-Induced kidney Damage

There are prescription, and over-over-the-counter products that can cause kidney damage. This is a list of some of the medications that can cause problems.

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NAIDs)

• Ibuprofen (example, Advil)
• Aspirin (example, Excedrin)
• Naproxen sodium (example, Aleve)
• Celecoxib (Celebrex)
• Acetaminophen (Tylenol, dose related)

High blood pressure medicines

• Hydralazine
• ACE inhibitors

Some Diuretics

Antibiotics

• Penicillin
• Sulfa drugs
• Cyclosporine

Preventing

Chronic Kidney disease (CKD) is the loss of kidney function. The number of people with kidney failure has doubled from 1990 to 2000. The annual cost of treating kidney failure is over $20 billion. A loss of kidney function ups the risk of heart attacks or strokes.

Prevention is not what the medical field calls for. They want regular checkups to see if you have signs of impaired kidney function. It is obvious that the kidneys are part of an overall picture of health. If the leading cause of this condition is either diabetes or high blood pressure, than you are dealing with something that is lifestyle related.

On the other hand if you are on some medications that can cause kidney failure it is an indicator that you have a host of health related problems. You prevent kidney failure the same way you prevent any chronic condition. By recognizing that changing what you do, will change what is happening within.

Naturally

Naturally it is hard to sell patients the idea of taking charge of their own health. There is dissent in the medical community that creates a climate of distrust. Combating a dangerous health problem with little else then diet, exercise, faith, and determination seems counterintuitive.

It takes tenacity to go against the prevailing logic. Modern medicine offers unpalatable choices. Promising that drugs are and will be the answer leaves us adrift at sea. We wait for a rescue ship to reach us in the nick of time.   

The promised cures are in the pipelines, years away. Research has shown that weight loss helps ward off decline in kidney function. A new study has found that exercise extends the lives of people with kidney disease.

Another interesting fact is that people with kidney disease have conditions not directly related to kidney problems. They in fact usually have compromised health due to other factors.

The dangers is modern medicine doesn’t recognize its limits. They have been wrong for so long that that they have trouble shifting focus. Getting hooked to a machine is not the same as empowering yourself and taking charge of your own health.